The Locust. 



j)Osition, my excellent friends at Bayskle entered into my 

 views, abont introducing the Locust into England. The 

 Judge showed me a post, which he said must be nearly a 

 Imndred years old as a post. This post had been cut down, 

 when a little tree, and it had served in the capacity of what 

 they call a hog-gallows post. I examined it very minutely, 

 and I found it perfectly sound, even to the very tips of it. 

 It was a post with a fork at the top of it. The points of 

 the fork had been chopped off in a careless manner ; and 

 there were these points perfectly sound. But the main 

 (juestion was, how ^vas the post luhere it met the ground f 

 It was just as sound there as it was in any other part. It 

 had stood in a gutter, observe, for all these number of years. 

 The water thrown to wash out the hogs had run down the 

 gutter, and had soaked down about the post. The nume- 

 rous sweepings and shovelings of the gutter, to take away 

 the blood and the mud, had worn away the post a little, as 

 they would have worn aw^ay iron ; but still it w^as as sound 

 as on the day when it w^s felled. 



334. Judge Mitchell was so kind as to give me a me- 

 morandum, signed by himself, relative to this post; and 

 Judge Lawrence, not being so old as his brother Henry, 

 we sent for the latter, and he signed a memorandum, rela- 

 tive to the hog-gallow^s post. I dare say that every reader, 

 who delights in rural concerns, and who duly considers the 

 vast importance of this matter, wdll lament that he, also, 

 could not see these posts. If he happen to be in London, 

 HE MAY SEE THEIM NOW ; for they are to be seen by 

 any body at the Office of the Register in Fleet- street. The 

 Manchester Magistrates brought out horse and foot to pre- 

 vent me from passing through their town. The Bolton 

 Magistrates put John Hayes in prison, for ten weeks, for 

 announcing that I had arrived at Liverpool in good health. 



